vosla: Golden A'Design Award 2015

(PresseBox) (Plauen, Germany, 28.07.2015)At the A‘Design Award ceremony on Lake Como, vosla received the golden award in the category “Lighting Products and Lighting Projects Design” for its future-oriented design of the vosLED filament LED bulb.

The advancement of the classic Edison light bulb had convinced the jury. The entry in the A‘Design Yearbook reads as follows:

“The vosLED filament LED bulb generates warm light, which is almost identical with the light of the classic Edison bulb. It has the same appearance as the classic bulb, provides the same all-round radiation characteristics and has the same size and weight.

The glass bulb, the filaments and the transparent ring between the glass bulb and the bulb base give the vosLED the same look as its classical predecessor, combining it with the advantages that it will only get hand-warm during operation and weighs just 35 grams. These features provide lighting designers and lamp manufactures numerous new options. It opens up new dimensions for designers wishing to use different materials for light guiding and shielding and achieve new design and presentation effects. At the same time, it exploits the full potential of LED technology: 90 percent less energy, ten times longer operating life and easy recycling.“

Martin Enenkel is very proud of the recognition received from such a high-class jury: “The A‘Design Award is one of the most important – if not the most important – design competitions in the world. We are very happy about the overwhelming international recognition we have received for our vosLED bulb. After the Red Dot Design Award and the German Federal Ecodesign Award, this is actually the third highly recognized award for outstanding design and sustainability that we have received in just a few months.”

During the last year, a constantly growing number of hotels, restaurants, theatres – for example the Semper Opera House in Dresden – and public authorities have retrofitted their lighting infrastructure with filament LED lamps.

Innovative lighting: new freedom for lighting designers

The vosLED bulb is a visually attractive and energy-saving alternative for all lighting designers and lamp manufacturers who have been reluctant to accept the previously available energy-saving light bulbs, long start-up and heating times and bulbs containing hazardous substances. While in the past the heat emitted by a light bulb set clear limits to the design freedom, now lighting designers are free to combine different materials, like textiles, paper or plastics, as they like – far beyond what used to be possible in the past.

Retrofit: innovation meets tradition

vosLED is not only suitable for modern design: in places of historical or vintage character, such as concert halls, the bulbs in the lamps, for example chandeliers, are very often visible. Here filament LEDs are the ideal replacement for conventional light bulbs, as they look like the original Edison bulb, but consume 90 percent less energy. Moreover, their ten times longer operating life markedly cuts the replacement costs for defective bulbs.

The technology

Unlike common LED lamps, which for technical reasons emit the light only upwards in a half circle, the vosLED bulb features a radiation angle of about 340 degrees, which is a very important factor, for example, for design lamps using visible bulbs or vintage-character chandeliers.

Inside the glass bulb, dozens of micro LEDs are strung together like pearls. This string-type arrangement closely resembles the filament of a conventional light bulb. The vosLED provides all advantages of an Edison bulb, but consumes only a fraction of electricity consumed by conventional light bulbs, achieves a much longer operating life and is free of any hazardous substances.

For Markus Winkler, Manager Development and Innovation at vosla, sustainability was a key aspect throughout the development of the vosLED bulb: “Whereas other bulb manufactures still apply the practice of embedding the electronic parts in the bulb grease, which connects the metal base with the glass bulb, our vosLED bulb has a plastic-shielded compartment in the base, which securely and durably protects the electronic parts against outside effects. This increases the service life of the entire light bulb system. Solvent-containing silicone or bulb grease have thus become a thing of the past.”